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Collecting Facebook likes and Twitter followers is important for
building a social media
fan base. But business owners who want tangible results from
their social media efforts are looking deeper into how they can
convert fans into advocates for their brands.

"The days of experimentation are over," Michael Wrigley, chief
marketing officer for U.K.-based social marketing platform
EngageSciences, said
yesterday during "You've Built a Fan Base, Now What?", a panel
discussion during the Social Media Week Conference in New York
City. Your fan base is like any other database, he said, and if
you don't activate it, "the data will be pretty much worthless."

Here are three strategies that you can use to turn your social
media fans into advocates for your brand:

1. Listen to, then engage with fans.
On a day in early September last year, Aaron Hall drove for seven
hours -- 400 miles total -- from Youngstown, Ohio to New York
City to be first person in line for the unveiling of the Nokia
Lumia 820 and 920 smartphones. That's how excited the 32-year-old
systems administrator was to see them.

When Nokia learned of Hall's journey, the company
blogged about it. The immediate result: a devoted customer
felt appreciated, and Nokia showed that it treats its customers
as individuals.

You might not come across passionate customers like Hall every
day, but the trick is to listen to what your fans and followers
are saying about you over social media, then engage with them and
highlight their passion for your brand. These people are your
biggest advocates, said Brad Spikes, Nokia's head of social media
marketing for North America.

2. Concentrate on your 'soul mates.'
The Humane Society of the United States has 1.6 million Facebook
fans and more than 180,000 Twitter followers. Its challenge is to
sift through all those people to find the few who will be
ambassadors for the Human Society's mission, says Michael Hutney,
director of emerging media and strategic accounts for The Stelter Co., a Des Moines,
Iowa-based marketing firm for nonprofits.

Hutney suggests launching fun social campaigns as one way to
separate out your most engaged fans. For example, the Humane
Society created a Facebook campaign around "cruelty-free"
products, including a quiz that encouraged users to "Test your
cruelty-free IQ." From there, it was possible to see which users
had shared the quiz, how many referrals they had made and how
many of their friends had subsequently taken the quiz.

With this method, "I can identify invisible people in the crowd
and find out who cares about [my brand]," says Hutney. Once these
top advocates had been identified, Humane Society communications
officers were able to follow up with them to get them further
involved.

3. Make new fans with multi-platform
campaigns.
Last November, Kellogg's cereal and a U.K.-based television
network teamed up to promote the company's new Krave cereal to
viewers aged 16 years and older. For a week, TV ads that ran
during Channel 4 shows popular with this demographic posed trivia
questions related to material in the show and directed viewers to
Krave's Facebook page to enter their answers. Kellogg's created
this
cross-platform promotion based on the knowledge that 72
percent of people 25 years old and younger use Facebook or
Twitter to comment on TV shows.

The result: 50,000 interactions with Krave's Facebook page, of
which 13,000 were referrals -- meaning people shared the
promotion with their friends, increasing Kellogg's marketing
reach and potentially creating new customers.

After a campaign like this, it's important for brands to examine
how well they're reengaging their existing fans, said Richard
Jones, CEO of EngageSciences. Go beyond treating your fan base as
just an undifferentiated set of numbers.